Anhedonia

I have been on a JOURNEY with life and it’s been horrible and painful and hurtful and yet…. I somehow just plough on through each day. But one of the main things people tell me to help me cope and try to lift the darkness that is my mental (and now physical) health - is, ‘‘oh but You're so good at art, you’re so skilled/talented, etc etc”….

I used to have 0 faith in myself and my art, and as the years have gone by and I have worked fucking hard to raise my skill level up, building on my self esteem, and finally FINALLY getting to a point where I look at my work and think, ““hey this is pretty okay!”  but fuuuuck is the social media part of making art just a fucking soul destroying process. ESPECIALLY now places are putting view counts on display.

I genuinely, don’t know what I’m doing wrong to get so little engagement on my work. I KNOW that numbers shouldn’t matter, and that’s not why I make work - but the last few years have been so disheartening and hurtful that every time I post my work now, I consider deleting everything. What’s the point in spending hours on the work, then posting across social media, making videos, hashtags, key words in posts, tagging, sharing, etc etc etc etc……if nobody sees it? All the work I’ve done to get myself at the point where I don’t detest my art, is being dragged down every single time I post now. I’ll sit for days afterwards feeling so dejected, rejected, unskilled, unwanted, unneeded - in the art space.

I’ve talked about it a few times with friends and online occasionally, but I don’t think I can fully express just how much it’s effecting me. If I take social media breaks, my engagement drops even further, the whole internet side of things just ruins me thoroughly, it’s vicious and I just hate everything. 

I’ve done every trick in the book to try and gain some traction on my work. Tags, hashtags, shares, recording, TikTok’s, websites, portfolios, art challenges, art trains, famous portraits, fan art, original art, and I know I’m not very good at marketing myself and my work but it’s so exhausting. I’m doing everything I possibly can to just get engagement on my art  and I get nowhere every time… it’s like having an exhibition on and nobody comes to see it…maybe a few people will walk by and peek in the window but nobody even opens the door.

The most popular content I’ve ever made, have been a fucking stupid TikTok about my eye colours and a fucking embroidery of a shrimp. Imagine spending 10s of £k in student debt, like 6 years in college/university, and hundreds of hours fucking sweating over painting and drawing, just for the 0 effort nothings to be the thing people look at

im Just rambling and wallowing in self pity. This isn’t useful. This isn’t going to make myself feel better. I am so SO tired of the only thing people find worth in me, and regularly telling me is a reason to stay alive, being completely ignored and unwanted, unseen & unheard. Probably shouldn’t be continuously told that my art skills are a reason to not Kms, because when you end up tying your self worth to a skill that nobody cares about to look at, it’s a dangerously close line to tiptoe. If any buds are reading this plz don’t tell me that my art talents would be wasted without me because it clearly isn’t true, it isn’t healthy, it isn’t helpful, and now I have to unlearn all of this and try to detach my feelings from my art engagement.